It’s fitting that Arizona Gov.
Janet Napolitano, president-elect Barack Obama's likely pick for Homeland
Security secretary, hails from a border state. Since its creation in the wake
of the September 11 attacks, the Department of Homeland Security has been
regarded mainly as a counterterrorism agency. But with three of its member agencies
focusing on immigration, DHS also is very much at the center of the debate
about the country’s immigration policy, including illegal immigration. How
would Napolitano approach that contentious issue?

A review of her gubernatorial record, as well as interviews
with Arizona
political insiders, suggests no definitive answer. From one perspective, Napolitano
understands the problem of illegal immigration and has taken halting steps to
combat it. As governor, Napolitano in August 2005 declared
a “state of emergency” along Arizona’s border
with Mexico, clearing the
way for the National Guard to block illegal entry into the United States.
Restrictionists again found an ally in the Democratic governor in July of 2007,
when she signed
an employer-sanctions law that made it a crime for businesses to hire illegal
immigrants. Employers protested, but Napolitano stood firm, explaining that she
signed the law “out of the realization that the flow of illegal immigration
into our state is due to the constant demand of some employers for cheap,
undocumented labor.” Just one month before signing the sanctions law,
Napolitano wrote an op-ed
in Washington Post boasting that
under her watch Arizona
saw the apprehensions of 550,000 illegal immigrants in 2005 alone. “Don't label
me soft on illegal immigration,” Napolitano wrote.

Her critics, however, have done
just that – and not without evidence. Tough talk notwithstanding, not everyone
agrees that Napolitano has taken a hard line on illegal immigration. Republican
State Senator Linda Gray, a 12-year veteran of the Arizona legislature, dismisses the
governor’s support for border control as so much political posturing. “Tough on
immigration and border control?” Gray asks. “The legislature appropriated money
for our National Guard to be at the border and she did not use the funds,” says
Gray. “The major reason she signed the employer sanction bill was because she
didn't want the harsher initiative that was headed for the ballot.”

If Gray is skeptical of
Napolitano’s credentials as an immigration hawk, it’s because she has clashed
with the governor before. In 2003, for instance, Gray sponsored House Bill 2345. Designed to curb voter fraud, the bill would have
required voters to present a driver’s license or two forms of identification
when voting. Not only did Napolitano veto the bill but she supported a proposal that would have granted driver’s licenses to
illegal immigrants. (Napolitano has since been muted in her for support issuing
licenses to illegals.) Look beyond the rhetoric, critics like Gray say, and
there is less to the governor’s record than meets the eye. A case in point: In
the same Washington Post op-ed in
which she challenged opponents to call her “soft” on immigration, Napolitano
came out in favor of the Senate bill that effectively would have granted
amnesty to illegal immigrants had it not been defeated. “She supports driver’s
licenses for illegals which could not make through the legislature, and she
supports amnesty,” says Gray. “That is hardly someone who is tough on
immigration.”

Echoing Gray’s concerns is Republican state Rep. John Kavanagh.
“I give her mixed credit,” says Kavanagh, whose bill proposing restrictions on
“day laborers,” who often are illegal immigrants, was vetoed by Napolitano in
2007. Kavanagh notes that even as the governor has sent the National Guard to
the border, “she’s been weak on internal enforcement.” He cites as evidence her
opposition to requiring police to enforce federal immigration laws. Critics
have long argued that empowering police to enforce immigration laws would
remove de facto protections for
illegal immigrants, including known criminals, and end “sanctuary cities” in
which immigration laws are violated with impunity. Yet this April, Napolitano vetoed precisely
such a bill, calling it “unnecessary.”

It is a curious fact of Arizona politics that despite her
stance on sanctuary cities, Napolitano has found a supporter – of sorts – in
one of state’s more famous foes of illegal immigration: Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-described “America’s
Toughest Sheriff” from Arizona’s south-central Maricopa County. “The problem
isn’t the immigration laws,” says Arpaio, who points out that his 160 deputies,
trained by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, a Homeland Security member agency, have arrested 2,439 illegals to date
under state and federal illegal immigration laws. “The problem is that some
political officials don’t like me enforcing the laws.”

One of those politicians, at least on occasion, is Janet Napolitano. This
May, the governor decided to transfer the sheriff’s $1.6-million state-funded
grant to fight illegal immigration to the Department of Public Safety (DPS), a
state agency. Sheriff Arpaio was not pleased. “One thing
you don't do is try to take away my money,” he thundered at the time. “I still have a gun and a badge.” Six months
later, the Sheriff is still sore about the governor’s decision. “She took my money away on the idea that
DPS would pursue outstanding 40,000 [felony] warrants. That’s all garbage. I
think she got some bad advice and she made a bad error.” Still, the sheriff
says that he has no hard feelings. “We’ve known each other for 16-years and we
have a mutual respect for each other.” And while Arpaio isn’t entirely sold on
the governor becoming DHS head (“I’ll still blast her”) or even on the idea of
the department itself (he calls it a “massive bureaucratic organization that
shouldn’t exist”), neither is he willing to condemn her selection. He may not
always agree with the governor on illegal immigration, Arpaio says, “but I give
her credit.”

Some immigration
hawks have also taken a charitable view of the Napolitano appointment. Mark
Krikorian, the executive director of the
Center for Immigration Studies, says that “she is probably the least bad
person that an Obama administration could have picked.” But Krikorian cautions
against expecting too much from Napolitano. As grounds for pessimism, he cites
her 2006 veto of a bill that would have given police the authority to arrest
illegal immigrants for trespassing. “It’s not that she’s done nothing – her
hawkish credentials are not entirely fictitious – but at the same time there’s
not much to it,” Krikorian says. On the other hand, he observes, “how much more
of a hawkish person could we have expected given this administration’s view?”

Immigration politics aside, another question raised by her
nomination is whether the term-limited governor really is interested in the DHS
job or whether she will use it as a springboard for an Arizona Senate seat. For
instance, there had been speculation that she would run for John McCain’s Senate
seat in 2010 were he to retire. McCain’s announcement
Tuesday that he will run again would seem to rule out the possibility, but
close observers of the state’s politics suspect that the governor could still challenge
Arizona’s
other Senator, Republican Jon Kyl, in 2012.

All which makes Napolitano’s entry into the national
spotlight as much a hazard as an opportunity. The mark of a successful DHS
secretary, Rep. John Kavanagh notes, is avoiding disaster on their watch. With
the nation’s illegal immigration problem very much in disaster territory that
may be easier said than done. Perhaps the best thing to be said for Napolitano
is that, as a veteran of Arizona’s
bruising immigration battles, she will not be going into the job in blindly.

We have implemented a new commenting system. To use it you must login/register with disqus. Registering is simple and can be done while posting this comment itself. Please contact gzenone [at] horowitzfreedomcenter.org if you have any difficulties.